


butterflies, butterflies

by goldenh0urs



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Mutual Pining, References to Drugs, Time Travel, i guess, seulgi and yuta are only briefly mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 17:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19361335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenh0urs/pseuds/goldenh0urs
Summary: His heartbeat quickens, and he feels all rational thoughts in his mind tumble over each other just as they have done since he first locked eyes with Jaehyun.Let it contaminate him, he thinks.





	butterflies, butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> this is for 97! at the Disco, written based on Nearly Witches by Panic! at the Disco
> 
> this is the first fic I've written in a while and although it was kind of a headache to write and I was kinda nervous, I'm actually really proud of it? the song itself is pretty important to me, and it's one of my favorite songs so I hope I did it justice.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the references to the song that I tried to include, and references to its original context (which is pretty interesting actually if you wanna look into it), and other than that, most of the setting is heavily influenced by the movie 2046!!
> 
> thank you to K for keeping me sane throughout the writing process and being my unofficial kinda sorta beta <3 and thank you to I for helping me figure out what direction to go in and for reading through it for me <3 
> 
> here's a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3RNopx9nfCHzIZRkyNjQag?si=DV_KPssCR-GXyia0QpoBTg) that you may want to listen to while reading!!

_ Who does a heart love if no one has noticed its presence and where does it go? _

   


Jaehyun sits at the convenience store at the end of the world.

The neon lights of the city all kind of blur together as the rain, heavy with chemicals that turn it to transparent sludge rolls down the shatterproof glass. It’s fucking  _ ironic _ , Jaehyun thinks sometimes, of the city outside. Miles and miles of skyscrapers, all pulsing with glaring fluorescent life, yet that’s exactly what this place lacks; life.

The advertisement on the side of what used to be a hotel, or an apartment building, he doesn’t know, they were all basically the same at the end anyway, flashes on again. The woman on it is smiling. As per usual. The advertisement’s purpose is lost beneath a trail of rain, distorting the brightly colored words on its side. Jaehyun wonders if when the company bought the ad they ever realized it would stay there forever and not just for a few months.

Six thirty is what it tells him. Time to get going.  


The advertisement stays on the side of the building for exactly two minutes. (He’s counted. He’s got all the time in the world to.) It’s eerie really, one of the few things that still move in the city. The woman’s smile, advertising something to do with highly priced facial modifications or something, is so  _ alive _ . As if it’s mocking him, telling him  _ you are not alone _ , in the most cynical way. As if he hasn’t looked in every single golden neon building, screamed into empty office blocks, opened the window of a nameless apartment that didn’t even need opening, it was already falling apart that badly, just for someone,  _ anyone _ .

It’s thirty five seconds that it takes for him to turn away from the window, dump whatever was left on his plate in the bucket he found next to the nutrition pills, and swivel around again.

The city is something like Jaehyun had read about in some textbook back in the day. A  _ ghost town _ , it was called in the book. Well, if this was something like that, it was a phantom. Sometimes he thinks this is nature’s way of laughing at him. The radioactivity didn’t settle into nuclear winter. It was some sick mutated thing, not the nuclear decay they had spoken of. It was so  _ hungry _ . It fed on the neon lights that lined every building like a starved animal. The night he left, and stared up at the smokey sky, he thought he would go blind. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that it got brighter with the rise and fall of his emotions, when he lay on the decaying ground and the deserted bridges above swam in front of his eyes like giant snakes.

When they first built it like this, he thinks, stepping out into the rain, they must have advertised the hell out of it. New York and Tokyo and Seoul and all those megacities could never have compared. 

People were so foolish to trust technology.  He’s thinking too much, he knows it, and he’s in too deep to turn back

As he walks through the empty streets, the only sounds come from the fizzing of leaking blue chemicals down the side of a shop front, and the squelch of his boots in the diseased ground. The sign is cracked now and the fluid seeps into the now barely comprehensible indentations that once bore the name of a luxury fashion store.

So it’s this way that Jaehyun finds himself back on the rooftop, overlooking all of N. City. In a way, he feels slightly more alive up here, with the cancerous wind ruffling through his hair and hands stretched over the railing. It’s high enough up here that he can see all of the city below him, or more often than not that he can choose to completely ignore it. Pretend that he’s back in Seoul, in the unnamed apartment on an unknown street that keeps appearing in his dreams.

“Seoul.” The vowels come out strange, as if the wind has taken them for its own interpretation, all disfigured and twisted. It feels awkward, because although he knows there’s no one around to hear it anyway, that feeling of  _ if someone was watching this right now, I’d look like a fool _ . 

The city was not a friend. It was not something tangible, something with warmth under its surface no matter how harsh the lights shone. There’s no warmth in a city that feeds on nuclear winter. It’s Jaehyun’s curse to forever be like this, he knew it the first time he realized radioactivity didn’t burn his skin. No, the city has lent him some of its bitterness. It accompanies him, but leaves him to suffer when he needs anything past a place to sleep. Jaehyun can cry and scream and shake at the metal railings of the rooftop but it will never respond, never give him the reassurance he hasn’t heard in years, nor will it argue back and give him the satisfaction of harsh words emerging from his mouth.

So it’s this way that Jaehyun falls asleep, feverishly on the roof of a decaying building beneath acid skies.

\--

The high is always the most captivating part. From the second the needle finds its way into his veins, the effect is always the same yet different: the thrill of the chemicals fizzing in his blood matched with the numbness of habit, always mixing together to create the tension that he now feels.

He’s been told that different people see it different ways; something to do with the mind’s individual complexity, but for him it’s always the same.

The train ride is always one painted with neon smudges of scenery zooming past. The carriages ahead are dimly lit by some kind of red light, making it seem as if they stretch all the way into infinity with how they fade into the distance. In a way, it’s true, because he doesn’t think he would ever come to an end if he ever tried to walk along the entire train. He doesn’t know if it’s all the red, but the carriage is always stuffy, stifling hot, and the windows don’t seem to let much air in. He doesn’t know why. Maybe the manifestation of his brain just wants him to suffer.

Ahead of him, Yuta leans against a window. Funny that, how the mind can create experiences for people that said person has no recollection of. In his dream state, dream Yuta turns around and flashes his same old catlike grin at him. “Here again, aren’t we?” He says, cranking down the window and sticking his head out so his words are blown away with the wind. 

“Johnny, my duuuuuuuude, relax.” Yuta drawls, grin turning to a lazy smile, looking at him through the window.

Johnny focuses on the pulse of the red lights illuminating the carriage and doesn’t say a word to the hallucination.

It’s the high everyone wants, escape from the mundanity of life. Seems like the mundanity happens to follow Johnny like the stifling heat of the train, even through the complexities of time.

\--

“1992. Wants to go back to his high school disco.”  Seulgi pours unidentified liquid into a tall glass as he slides across the bar seats. She tilts her chin towards an ambiguous figure in the rows and rows of chairs stretched out behind him, eyes still focused on whatever concoction she’s making.

“Really,” Johnny replies, taking the liberty to pour himself a shot from the assortment of bottles on the counter. Seulgi’s probably using them but she won’t care. There aren’t normally new customers that want to go back in time themselves; even if they do, there’s a whole list of things that need to be cleared and people just don’t have the patience for it. It’s why people like Johnny exist, the ones that do the dirty work.

His days of training blur in the back of his mind now, compressed into one singular feeling: long. And difficult. Countless days trying to get it right because if you fucked up that was someone’s life you could be erasing. Someone’s baby sleeping underneath a mobile of stars and planets in a warm loving house could be gone. 

The standard pattern of time travel is one he’s gotten used to now. He shoots up, gets there, follows instructions, returns, it all works like clockwork to him now, though he gets why the Association doesn’t let people do it themselves. Too risky when you aren’t sure people know what they’re doing.

There’s the train, too, somewhere in that mix, but Johnny never talks about it, not particularly because he isn’t supposed to, but part of him feels like it’s something he needs to keep to himself. As if it’s a sacred thing.

“Yeah.” is the response he gets as Seulgi pours the remnants of some unnamed brown liquid into the drink. Johnny waits with his hand around the shot glass for her real response. “You know very well I don’t like this time travel shit.”

Johnny thinks he’s probably asked Seulgi at some point in their acquaintanceship why she works at the Association if she’s so clear on her blatant dislike of the only thing that this whole building does. So close to the action too, with the rows and rows of unconscious bodies suspended somewhere else in time right in front of her. Making cocktails for the pending soul.

If she’s ever given him a proper answer to that question, he doesn’t remember. Really, it’s just duty, he thinks. Duty that binds them to the motions of daily life, the desire driven into the human mind to do your job every day even if you don’t have any use for the money past your basic needs. Where duty brings you, you follow.  In a way, the two of them aren’t too different.

Seulgi pushes the cocktail forward. “Drink.”

Later, the needle slides into his skin like a snake’s fangs, as the present disappears and the past comes into focus.

\--

The end of the world is quick.

03:41, South Korea. Jaehyun lies awake in his second floor room, staring at his ceiling. The sound of missiles overhead seeps in through the old dilapidated roof. It’s a subtle whirring, not anything that you’d expect such a large piece of machinery could emit. He imagines the chemicals and atoms inside, fusing and reacting and readying themselves for the final descent.

He should be scared, he thinks, staring up at the ceiling. The paint is peeling off; he wonders if they’ll get it repainted before the world has a chance to end. Over in the far corner there’s the checklist they handed out to everyone when nuclear weapons started to come into the equation. The black words, harsh against the bright orange background, are like a tattoo branded on a guilty offender. He knows he should be scared, should be saying his last goodbyes, but it’s all an empty void. An empty void he wishes didn’t exist, because everyone around him is so much more  _ passionate _ , so much more  _ emotional _ , and yes, he’s guilty.

How do you learn how to miss a world you never cared for in the first place?

Above him, millions and millions of miles above, the missiles of the East and West collide in a burst of light.

\--

Light blinds him when he opens his eyes, and Jaehyun groans, vowing to never fall asleep facing the sky again. His mind is halfway back in the realm of unconsciousness when there’s sound.

_ Sound _ is not infrequent in the age of post-nuclear war. Sometimes it’s thunder, waking up to a storm that lights up the peaks of distant buildings that tries to replace the sun that never rose. Other times, his mind is overtaken by the screams of dead people, their faces melting behind his eyelids before he opens them. But this is different.

Jaehyun forces his eyes to open very, very slowly.

He’s met with the beginnings of a blurry shape, darkened by the sun burning harsh rays behind it, and soon he realizes he’s looking into eyes, golden like pools of honey and very much nothing like anything Jaehyun has seen in a very long time.

The stranger blinks, something that shouldn’t take as long as it should, but to Jaehyun feels like slow motion.

Because the first thing Jaehyun realizes, as his eyes focus and refocus and map out the beginnings of a sloping nose, then warm lips and then finally the whole face comes into focus and oh my God, Jaehyun’s staring at a person.

So of course, his first reaction is to scream.

Time is not in slow motion anymore as the person - it? Him? - jerks away, and for a horrible moment Jaehyun feels those large brown eyes on him, and he’s not sure what to feel about that.

“Are you okay?”

Jaehyun closes his eyes as he lets the waves, the amplitudes and peaks and troughs of the human voice that he’d forgotten to carry in his memory wash through him.

There is only so much the human brain can focus on at one point in time. Similarly, the brain tends to retain information that is most important to it. Too much information causes the brain to overflow like the banks of a river clogged with waste and leaves everything scrambled like debris after a storm.

The stranger clears his throat, and this time the tremors of his cough tell Jaehyun he’s nervous. “My name’s Johnny.”

Jaehyun is haunted by two things now, the city, and Johnny’s face infinitesimally close to his.

\--

Heavy raindrops hit the glass of the convenience store front. It’s unclear what kind of substance it contains, but the droplets leave trails of blue behind them. Johnny looks to the sky in wonder, the dark purple lit up by the glow of the city. In a sense, he feels out of his body. Like he’s not really experiencing all of… this, whatever it is. The future.

Johnny remembers, from training, how the future was never mentioned. It was almost a taboo, even amongst the students themselves in the dorm rooms. The newbies were the most likely ones to slip up, start asking “but what about the future?” with their young faces screwed up in confusion. They would be met with stares from the older ones and finally, if the one student allowed it to the question would make it to the teachers themselves, to which they would be sated with the simple “We don’t talk about it. It isn’t of importance.” that delivered the message. It’s not good for you to know.

He looks over at the tables, the counter with its cashier tray open, the chairs messily arranged. There’s even a mop in the corner with its accompanying bucket half bleached of color, a side effect of who knows what happened here.

At school, Johnny had stood in the shoes of that new student, the one who was overly inquisitive until enough discreet looks and unsaid words eventually told him to shut up and listen. And now, he thinks, he understands. The future, unlike the past he’s so used to, is such a gamble. He’s never been sure what to do in life. Throughout school, he was the only one who had seemed to plateau at every subject, the only one failing to secure any vocational direction. Sometimes he wonders if he only took this job because it would keep his mind busy, away from the big question of  _ what am I doing here _ that seems to have plagued him since those early days. 

He’s interrupted by a shape out of the corner of his eye. The purple-haired boy sits down three seats away from him, slicking back his drenched hair. 

“The… rain?” Johnny asks tentatively, not sure what to say.

Jaehyun raises his head and for the first time Johnny gets a view of his side profile as he rests his head on his hands. “I’m immune to it. That’s why I’m still alive. It’s some kind of genetic mutation.” With eyes looking straight forward, Jaehyun looks like the hero on some movie poster, down to his hair which, thanks to the rain, looks like it’s been styled and of course, the whole situation they’re in. 

“Sorry. For, uh, that. Up there.” He gesticulates again, and Johnny notices the glimmer that the light makes on his soaked skin. For a while Johnny finds himself unable to speak, mesmerized by the way the light reflects off the curves of Jaehyun’s face. “It’s okay, I mean you’ve… you probably haven’t seen anyone in a while, it was… surprising.” He finally replies.

_ Up there _ , he’d seemed so formidable. His features were unreadable, expression sinking into itself as if it had been painted and repainted onto his face. As he’d turned away from them, that cold aura still surrounding him even though his voice was calm. But now, it’s clear that he’s vulnerable, in the strangest way that intrigues Johnny. The frame of his body under his thin T-shirt suggests that he’s thin, but not underweight. He drums his fingers on the table as he focuses on something outside the store - and doesn’t talk. 

Somehow this Jaehyun person was an enigma Johnny wanted to solve.

“How long have you been here? I mean - this is the end of the world, right? Post apocalypse? That’s what you said, isn’t it?” He’s unable to stop the words tumbling out, vowels and consonants tripping over each other. 

Jaehyun sighs, and Johnny can feel the tension in the air. “I stopped counting after 5 years.” 

He doesn’t know what to say to that.

What is one supposed to say to the sole survivor of an apocalypse anyway?

“You have some explaining to do, I think.” The other’s soft voice suddenly sharpens, cold like the air around them, fizzing with intent. The shock must show on Johnny’s face, because Jaehyun shrugs. 

“You said it yourself. It’s the end of the world. It’s not every day three random guys show up at the end of the world.” 

Johnny breathes in and out. “I- We’re time travelers.” He goes with the simple version of it first. “Time travelers who are hired to work for clients. We’re supposed to go back in time, change one specific thing, then we get paid.” He adds, because that doesn’t seem like enough for Jaehyun. 

“Actually,” Johnny continues, when Jaehyun doesn’t fill the short silence he allows, “We’re supposed to be in 1979 right now, helping some kid’s parents buy the kid a different pet. The one they got originally was a dog, and it got run over while the kid was watching. The whole thing gave him some kind of trauma for the rest of his life, so we’re changing that.”

The whole idea seems silly to him now. What problems could a  _ dog  _ cause when he was staring the apocalypse in the face right now?

“But you’re here.” says Jaehyun.

“But I’m here.” Johnny repeats.

The convenience store is silent for a moment, and Johnny maps Jaehyun’s movements as he looks towards a building in the distance, the giant screen plastered on its walls displaying the logo of some company he’s never heard of. In that moment, his conscience pulses at the back of his brain. He’s not supposed to be here, let alone  _ here _ , with this strange boy, away from his teammates who are no doubt panicking and trying to figure out how to fix this glitch. Yet somehow, he wants to.

Johnny figures that since he’s in limbo, he might as well make the most of it.

“You know,” and Johnny decides then that Jaehyun is a man of few words. “It’s not plastic and pollution and all that that ends it all.”

Neon green liquid drips from a leaking pipe and into a puddle that swirls with mesmerizing colors. “It’s humans. It’s always humans who put their own needs first. There’s so much in the world they were willing to destroy just to win something intangible, and look where it got them."

The whole area darkens for just a moment as the advertisements change themselves. Only the battered boiler lamps inside the store are on, for that one moment, and the two of them are outlined in dim golden light

Jaehyun’s silhouette gets up from the table and glides through the darkness. “You should get back to your friends. Tell them there’s space to sleep in the bunker under the building you found me in.” 

He’s moved through the bare arch of the entrance, when he turns back. “Don’t touch the table, by the way.” Jaehyun gestures to where he sat. “The chemicals. It might kill you.” Then without another word, he’s gone and the world illuminates itself again.

Johnny watches his retreating figure, head burning from the conversation he’s just had and the everlasting brilliance of this new world around him.

\--

N. City, as he comes to realize, has a life of its own.

There’s no doubt that it’s more beautiful than all the cities of old that he’s used to. The architecture is crafted so finely that he wonders exactly how far into the future he must be, how far technology has advanced in order for these buildings to be created. The myriad of skyscrapers and towers that the city is makes him dizzy every time he ventures outside the one safe building Jaehyun told them to stay in, tattered umbrella in hand, a leftover from the old world. Johnny’s only lived in this reality for a couple days, but it’s starting to feel like his reality as much as it is Jaehyun’s.

Opposite the safe building is a towering office block, the front entirely made of glass save for the main entrance, where a faded banner hangs above it. The once bold red words are now a shade of dull pink, to the point where individual letters seem to blend into each other. High above, a railway snakes across the ever-changing colors of the sky, supported by tall pillars of metal that reflect the blinding lights of the office block.

Johnny wonders what it would be like to have lived here, in some time that was somehow in the past yet also in the future, unattainable but not unimaginable. He imagines staring down at the beautiful green and yellow and blue of the whole place from one of the tiny train capsules that now sat, dilapidated and broken down.

Jaehyun won’t tell him what it was ultimately, what specific event that led to the end of humanity.

Johnny doesn’t blame him. Someone like Yuta would try to put an end to it, what with the way he’s already scribbled pages and pages on how to get them back to the present. For now though, Johnny’s taken a liking to this place, and the strange boy he can’t wipe from his mind.

\--  


“How did you get here?” Johnny says, on one of their more liberal days. 

Jaehyun’s eyes flicker up from where he’s sitting cross legged opposite Johnny, under the charred metal roof. His hands stop where they were tying knots in a piece of yarn. “Just… came here.”

There’s silence as the air around them hums, and then Jaehyun speaks again. “It’s not that hard to see this place. It was glowing. Even from so far away.”

Jaehyun's voice is even quieter than usual as he says, "Everyone wanted to be here. It was the forefront of technology, people would have died to be living in one of these buildings."  Everything he doesn't say is obvious.

“You walked?”

“There’s enough time to walk when the world is over.”

Johnny leans forward, finds Jaehyun’s hand, and holds it tightly.

\--

“Have you ever been to New York?” Jaehyun asks Johnny once, when they’re lying on the roof of a nameless building. He nods, eyes still fixed on the sky. “Once or twice.”

“London?”

“Just for a day. And that was once.”

Jaehyun takes a break from watching the chemicals dance in the air to turn over and stare at the other man. His hair is all messy, uncut and falling over his eyes. “Tell me about it.” 

Johnny closes his eyes. “New York. It was the 1990s when I went there, I think. We had to get these two people to tell each other something, I can’t remember what now.” 

“Were they in love?”

“We can’t change love confessions. Too much emotion involved.”

“Were they happy?”

“Yes. I think so. They seemed pleased.”

Johnny shifts so that their eyes meet, and Jaehyun feels his hand on his cheek. A trembling one, but the grip is sure enough, and Johnny’s fingerprints embed themselves into his skin. “I know you miss it.”

Jaehyun feels his heartbeat quicken, but doesn’t miss a beat. “Miss what?” He says, and notices how his voice becomes too overconfident and bright. 

“The…” Johnny finds his voice faltering. How does he explain everything? The longing with which Jaehyun looks out from the rooftop when it’s just the two of them up there, how there’s always a hint of something in his eye even when he’s laughing. “Everything.” He finally decides on saying.

Jaehyun raises an eyebrow, the beginnings of a smile at the corner of his lips. “Care to explain?”

“You’re so…” Johnny’s hand is hot on his cheek, in the cold breeze of the night. In the end, he decides on honesty. “Since the first day, you’ve just had this way about you that I can’t put my finger on. You were so cynical, but you talked with so much passion, and… I don’t know.”

It’s one of those days today, when thunder and lightning crackles through the atmosphere and as the sky rumbles above them, Jaehyun’s face lights up and if Johnny was lost for words before, he’s even more so now.

A needle slides itself into Johnny’s brain and he wonders if this is what addiction feels like.

His heartbeat quickens, and he feels all rational thoughts in his mind tumble over each other just as they have done since he first locked eyes with Jaehyun.

Jaehyun’s lips are very, very soft and for a moment, when Jaehyun kisses him back, the crazed part of Johnny’s mind that is somehow still hanging on by its last thread wonders if he’ll get radiation contamination. 

When they break apart, they’re both laughing, and Johnny gasps for air, not quite sure what they’re laughing for but too dazed to stop and think.

Let it contaminate him, he thinks.

\--

_ REPORT #526 _

_ Subjects (3) found to be missing following incompletion of mission involving [CLASSIFIED]. Further investigation provided information showing a malfunction in the [CLASSIFIED] causing a scent to be emitted, which caused all three subjects to enter an enhanced state of unconsciousness caused by the [CLASSIFIED] drug.  Information collected from the [CLASSIFIED] details an unprecedented travel into the future, approximate area 2XXX. Technology experts currently working on a solution. _

\--

Jaehyun ignores Johnny for three days.

He expects some kind of big confrontation, when Johnny comes up to the roof and finds him. Over the time Johnny has spent here, it’s become their place, and Jaehyun tries not to think about the implications of that.

Johnny just stands there, ten meters away from him, holding the umbrella Jaehyun gave him in his hand. It’s almost comical, the way his tall figure looks while holding that ugly thing.

“Are you okay?” is all he says.

Jaehyun looks up, and when their eyes meet he’s overwhelmed by that sensation again. “That umbrella doesn’t really do anything.” Johnny, if confused, doesn’t let it show on his face. “You’re still getting lethal amounts of radiation every minute, so what does it matter?”

“Why haven’t you talked to me in days?”

“We can’t do this, Johnny.”

It’s as silent as the first day they met and Jaehyun is beginning to feel stupid.

“Johnny, we’re different. You’re… so alive. You have a job, you actually talk to people, you earn money, you belong somewhere. I’m as good as fucking dead, for God’s sake. I’m selfish and you know what, when the world was ending, I didn’t give a shit. I just let it end. I never told you this but I’m telling you now that I lay there, in my bed, aware that everyone was going to die soon and everything I knew would be wiped out and I did nothing.” Jaehyun pauses, trying to push away the tears that make their way to the surface.

“I wish I could feel sorry for it but I don’t. That’s fucked up, isn’t it?” A laugh escapes him, Johnny recognizes it from the first time they kissed, but it’s not the same. This is a manic sort of laugh, the sound of someone who has seen too much.

Johnny’s reply is slow, calculated, and Jaehyun momentarily hates him for it. “I’m not like that.”

Johnny lowers the stupid umbrella and breathes in. He imagines his lungs filling with metaphorical radiation, the little particles rattling in his body. “Before you I wasn’t living. You’re wrong about that. I was floating through life, without purpose. “

Like how physics states that everything has an equal and opposite force, Jaehyun is Johnny’s normal, the force that pushed him onto the straight and narrow path.

“I know you’re not good for me, but I can’t let go, Jaehyun.” Deep breaths. The fizzing of the air around him reminds him he’s breathing in something that could kill him. His body is probably already decaying. He tries not to think of it. “I know you feel it, too. There’s something, I don’t know how to explain it, but I can’t let go.”

_ And I don’t want to. _

He leaves the unsaid words hanging in the air.

The look on Jaehyun’s face shows him he’s right.

\--

_ REPORT #526, FOLLOW UP _

_ Incident confirmed to be related to an anomaly in the [CLASSIFIED] of the user. Drug interfered with the increased level of activity of [CLASSIFIED] causing transport destination to be randomized. The Association is considering sending experienced agents to deal with the situation. This file is to be updated soon with more details. _

\--  


_ REPORT #526, FOLLOW UP _

_ Scheduled travel to the future has been confirmed for XX/XX/XX, at 10:00 am. _

_ Updates to be added. _

\--  


The advertisement with the smiling woman flickers onto the full length screen for the twelfth time that day, informing Jaehyun that it’s 9:58 am. 

Johnny is already there, at the convenience store at the end of the world, and this time Jaehyun sits next to him, not three seats across.

In the past, this one bar table would have been full of customers, he thinks. His mind supplies the mental image, this place, without the broken cashier, bright and clean. He wonders if any of them were lovers.

They sit together, and Jaehyun wonders if the two of them are lovers.

“Jaehyun?”

“Yes?”

“You know what I said about not being able to let go? I meant it.”

Jaehyun snorts. He rests his head on Johnny’s shoulder, feeling the muscle beneath it tense. 

“Stay, then.”

It’s just then that a burst of red smoke erupts in front of both their silhouettes, cast in muted light as the woman’s smile disappears from the screen.

   


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it - please leave a comment/kudos if you did!!


End file.
